Saturday, November 24, 2012

A pledge by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to re-open all
cases against those responsible for attacks on anti-Mubarak and anti-military
protesters in the last 21 months did little to prevent militant soccer fans
clamoring for justice for hundreds of dead protesters, including 74 of their
own, from joining the outpour of anger against the president’s unilateral
decision to grab wide-ranging powers.

Mr. Morsi had hoped that the re-opening of cases, which
largely failed to condemn those responsible for repeated crackdowns on
protesters, would soften the blow of his power grab and would prevent the
militant, highly politicized, street battle-hardened soccer fans from taking to
the streets.

The fans or ultras, one of Egypt’s largest civic groups
after Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, played a key role in last year’s toppling
of former president Hosni Mubarak and subsequently emerged as the most militant
opposition to the military that led Egypt to the election last July that
brought Mr. Morsi to power.

The fans’ threat to disrupt soccer matches have prevented
the lifting of a ten-month suspension of professional football imposed in
February after 74 supporters of crowned Cairo club Al Ahly SC died in a
politically loaded brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port Said. More than 70
people, including nine mid-level security officials, are on trial in Cairo for
their role in the worst incident in Egyptian sporting history in a slow-moving
legal process.

The ultras have insisted that they would prevent a lifting
of the suspension as long as justice for the 74 dead has not been served. The
outpouring of public anger against Mr. Morsi’s power grab offered them an
opportunity to press their demands for reform of the security forces, an end to
corruption in Egyptian soccer and the removal of Mubarak-era appointees from
official positions in the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) and the boards of
clubs.

It also gave the ultras – many of whom are unemployed,
under-educated youth who view the police and the security forces as the representatives
of Mubarak era repression and see battles with them as an exertion of their
wounded dignity – a renewed opportunity to confront law enforcement. In a
replay on the anniversary of battles last year that lasted several days on
Mohammed Mahmoud Street near Cairo’s Tahrir Square in which 42 people were
killed and more than 1,000 wounded, hundreds of ultras have been fighting the
police and security forces on that same street for the past five days.

Thousands of ultras joined mass protests against Mr. Morsi’s
power grab on Friday on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, chanting “The people want to
topple the regime, “Do not be afraid, Morsi has to leave,” and “Down with Mohamed
Morsi Mubarak.” Hundreds of more ultras confronted the security forces on
Mohammed Mahmoud and Qasr al Aini Street with rocks and Molotov cocktails. They
said the security forces were responding with live gun fire and tear gas. Again
like in past battles on Mohammed Mahmoud Street, tens of protesters suffering
from suffocation and other injuries were ferried on motorcycles to a field
hospital set up in Tahrir Square.

15-year old Ahmed Mounir told Egypt’s Ahram Online that his
brother had been injured in last year’s Mohamed Mahmoud clashes and had to have
a leg amputated. “I have been in the square for three days now. I want to
secure my brother’s rights and I don’t care if I live or die,” Mr. Mounir said.

Mr. Mounir’s battle and that of his fellow ultras is a battle
for karama or dignity. Their dignity is vested in their ability to stand up to
the dakhliya, the interior ministry that controls the police and the security
forces, the knowledge that they no longer can be abused by security forces
without recourse and the fact that they no longer have to pay off each and
every policemen to stay out of trouble.

In doing so, the ultras build on a perception perpetuated by
repressive security forces in popular neighborhoods and in the stadiums of
their arbitrary use of force. In the words of scholars Eduardo P. Archetti and
Romero Amilcar police and security forces’ “use of physical force aided by arms
of some kind….(was) exclusively destined to harm, wound, injure, or, in some
cases, kill other persons, and not as an act intended to stop unlawful behavior
that is taking place or may take place.”

Official foot-dragging in holding security officers
accountable adds to that perception, giving “police power…the aura of
omnipotence” that “at the same time lost all legitimacy both in moral and
social terms,” they argued– a development reinforced in post-revolt Arab
societies such as Egypt by the failure to date to reform the security
forces. “To resist and to attack the
police force is thus seen as morally justified,” they wrote.

The renewed clashes on Mohammed Mahmoud Street are as much a
protest against Mr. Morsi’s granting to himself of powers that include immunizing
his decisions against legal challenges and the banning of courts from
disbanding the controversial council drafting Egypt’s new constitution and
parliament’s upper chamber as they are the highlighting frustration with Mr.
Morsi’s failure to address the urgent need for reform of the police and the
security forces.

Without such reforms violent street protests are likely to
erupt on every occasion that offers itself such as happened during recent
protests in front of the US embassy in Cairo against an American-made anti-Muslim
video clip. Those protests led in the Libyan city of Benghazi to the death of
the US ambassador and three other US officials. Reform of the police and
security forces would open the path to Egypt’s return to post-revolt normalcy.
It would also allow for a lifting of the ban on professional soccer, a signal of
the return of the calm needed for Egypt’s embarking on a road of economic
recovery.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile